Nationalities & Development

PRIME Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand said that the development of all nationalities is the prime concern of His Majesty's Government in order to ensure all round and sustainable development in the country. Speaking at a programme organised by Tharu Kalyankari Sabha (Tharu Welfare Council) and Tharu Students'Society, on the occasion of Maghi Parba, in Kathmandu, the other day, Prime Minister Chand said that the governemnt is soon going to introduce and implement phase-wise programmes for the uplift of social and economic condition of all nationalities in the country. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural nation, which the Constituion of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990 has also adopted. His late Majesty King Prithvi Narayan Shah has symbolically described Nepal as a garden of four castes and 36 sub-castes. The government has always paid serious and sincere attention towards protecting interests of all ethnic communities and developing their cultures. These varied cultures create Nepal's national culture, which we describe as unity in diversity. It is true that unless and until all ethnic communities are brought to national mainstream of development, the overall progress of the country cannot be achieved. The Constitution and other legal framework provide equal opportunities to all people in order to bring about social and economic transformation and creating an egalitarian society in the country, which His Majesty's Government has strictly implemented. Nepal is a developing country and in this situation, the first and foremost thing that the government needs to do is to alleviate absolute poverty and raise the economic condition of the people. For this, income-generating activities followed by easy access to education and health care facilities are very urgent. Realising this fact, the government has announced policies and programmes for the development of all, especially those who are poorest and downtrodden. The decision of the government to abolish Kamaiya system, the agricultural bonded labourer system, in some western terai districts, needs special mention here. The government has also brought about special programme for rehabilitation and development of ex-Kamaiyas. The Tenth Plan of the government also aims at carrying out income generating activities for the ex-Kamaiyas in order to bring them into the national mainstream. Prime Minister Chand has once again reiterated the commitment of the government to do all the needful for resolving the problems being faced by the ex-kamaiyas. For this, as said by the Prime Minister, the government is sending a probe committee to find out the woes of ex-Kamaiyas, poor and landless people and take necessary measures to uplift their condition. This is, no doubt, a positive step towards eradicating poverty and raising the quality of life of the people alienated from the mainstream of national development.

Quake Safety

THE National Earthquake Day, marked on Thursday, has a message loud and clear to Nepal: that the country should be prepared all the time for the worst that the quakes can cause here. Both the history of the past quakes that wrought heavy damage across Nepal and the geography that shows immense variations in altitudes from Mountains to Hills and Terai flatlands call for an urgency and preparedness that we cannot simply overlook. The Himalayan mountains are fragile, the movement of the Asian and the Indian tectonic plates have caused faults in various parts of the country and, worse still, the traditional houses in the poor villages are as vulnerable as the modern houses in the cities that were not built to meet the contingency of the quakes. Urban centres like the capital city of Kathmandu have graver reasons to fear the worst-most old settlements are a tightly-knit cluster of houses and new ones have sprung up in a haphazard manner. Many of them do not meet the standard engineering designs to stand quakes of serious magnitudes.

While the 1934 earthquake is the saddest reminder of mass misfortune brought by a natural calamity of that scale, periodic tremors of lesser magnitudes have caused a huge loss of lives and property in different places of Nepal. As we commemorate the deaths and deadliness of the earthquake of some seventy years ago, when no technology could tell us about such a danger as looming and immediate, we can feel a little safer now that seismologists have their devices to monitor the movements of earth and tell us in advance that quakes can occur. Although precise forecast is far from possible as yet, seismologists can still be a great help for us in avoiding being caught unawares. So it is better if we heed their advice such as avoiding movable objects and hiding beneath strong furniture and door frames in case tremors actually hit. The best precaution is to build safer homes. That is for the people. Authorities have a bigger role to make sure that houses are built to meet quake standards and generate public awareness about how the common people can avoid being caught in quakes and cope with the trauma in their aftermath.